Craft Book Month

This week I've been enjoying reading posts by various bloggers participating in Craft Bud's Craft Book Month. I decided to join in the link-up and started going through my flickr stream to see what my options were. Of course the last few months I've been sewing almost weekly from Patchwork, Please!, but since you've been hearing alot about that already, I decided to look further back in the year. (Please see this tab if you are a new reader and want a quick peek at all the delightful zakka projects!)

I was really kind of shocked to see that though I had made many projects inspired by craft books, I'd only made one actual item, and that would be a modern log cabin quilt from Susan Beal's Modern Log Cabin Quilting: 25 Simple Quilts and Patchwork Projects.

The feature fabric for this quilt was curio by basic grey for Moda on a background of Kona Eggshell. Backing is Kona Parchment with strips of Eggshell and curio flowers on orange. 

Piecing was done entirely with Aurifil Mako 50wt cotton thread in Natural, and the quilt was finished with a scrappy curio binding. You can read my original post on this quilt here.

I found the pattern very straight-forward, though I did make mine slightly larger, finishing at 95" square. Due to its size, I had it quilted by my friends at Girton Quilting. You can see lots more projects made from the book in the Modern Log Cabin Quilting flickr group. This is definitely a good one for taking a traditional block and making it modern.

Linking up with Craft Buds/Craft Book Month.

Craft Book Month

The last few weeks, it's been fun to hear fellow bloggers talk about their favorite craft books and share project from them. There's been quite the expansive blog hop as part of the celebration of "all things craft book". In all honestly, there are about 10 stacked at the foot of my ironing board, 3 or 4 of which I've gone back to repeatedly over the last year for inspiration. One of my favorites is Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen.

I love that though this book has projects you can do, it strongly encourages you to let the techniques inspire you to create your own unique designs. So it's very conducive to newcomers to improv as well as those that want to move in their own direction.

Though I'd dabbled in improv quilting a few times before, it was a whole different thing to actually take a class with one of the Quilting Modern authors. To put it simply, we practiced every technique in the book, ending the day with an odd little assortment of pieced blocks, and a wad of Katie's scraps to finish whatever.

I decided to make a sampler quilt of sorts with my blocks, and felt full license to put them together however I felt moved. And I started by taping a grid up on the wall of my sewing room, and 'building' each panel, as described in the book. 

Here's my finished quilt, loosed based on the book's "mod tv quilt".

I used the same panel technique as I pieced the remaining class blocks into a backing.

This quilt was a fun foray deeper into improv, with a book that I know will continue to inspire me.

Linking up with Craft Buds.